What do NGWS, COM++, and .NET All Have in Common?

Do you know what NGWS, COM++ and .NET all have in common? About ten years ago, these were all candidates for the name of a new framework being created by Microsoft. NGWS and .NET were the two that came down to the wire, but we all know that .NET won.

I believe that Next Generation Web Services (NGWS) was a close second. In fact, I was priviledged to get to work with Christophe Wille to create the first C# book ever published called Presenting C#. It was a book written by Christophe and published in time to be at the Microsoft PDC in the United States when .NET was announced. If you find a copy of the book, you'll see that there are a lot of references to NGWS. That is because the name changed between the time the book was completed and the time Microsoft announced .NET.

Things were moving fast ten years ago around C# and .NET. Ten years later, we have .NET 4.0 in beta and changes in C# continue to come regularly. The excitement around C# and .NET was very high when it was announced. I believe it is safe to say that that excitement still shows in C# today. After all, it has become one of the most demanded programming languages today!

Of course, as C# reaches its tenth birthday, you have to wonder what the next language will be that surpasses it. More importantly, you have to wonder if it is something already out there, just waiting for a good name!